


Sink

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Diving, F/M, Gen, Mass Effect 3: Leviathan, Oceans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:19:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2024913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thane is gone but his words won't leave Saoirse as she goes in search of the leviathans.</p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: sink</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sink

She's thinking about Thane's words when she drops down into the dark in the Triton.  
  
Oceans and the afterlife and Saoirse might be sure it's not that long until they're reunited but she doesn't want it to be here. Kaidan's up on deck, so is EDI and Cortez and she's dooming them to the life of the logs they read when they waited for Cortez to get their shuttle going again. Dooming anyone else the Normandy sends down if they're here for too long. Saoirse's not the religious type really but she can see where Thane was coming from now as the Triton shudders around her when they finally hit a shelf. Saoirse never saw the sea growing up, no trips to the beach, no splashing around in the waves, no snorkelling or whatever else people do but she was always fascinated by it, by just how alien it seemed. In school – and she was one of the few of the Reds in that crowd to actually go on a regular basis – she used to love biology lessons when they went into detail about how extreme life was down there.  
  
It's why the fish tank in her cabin excites her so much, why she keeps it stocked with such a variety of fish – including jellyfish not so different to the ones here now – and looks after them. It's a private world that tested the limits of humanity when they struggled to go deeper, to understand their own world better.  
  
A flare shoots out in the distance, like the pulsing lights from creatures that live in the dark and she wants to know what's down here. What lures its prey with the pulse of the beacon. If she remembers correctly, and she probably does, she always devoured every nature documentary, especially the ones about the sea and the deep sea, the ones that discussed the history of it too and how long it took them to develop the technology to explore the Mariana Trench and the Challenger Deep.  
  
No wonder humanity likes comparing the stars to the ocean.  
  
Because this feels like going to an uncharted system. Not knowing what she's going to find, just like when they found that strange sphere going through different worlds for Project Firewalker. When it's just as dark here and punctuated by specks of light.  
  
Right now she looks around as she makes slow but careful progress and if she gets stuck down here then she dies, she dies alone and cold in the dark and panic bubbles through her until she does the breathing exercises, lets her body get back to an even keel. She looks up and it's so dark, she can't even tell where the surface is and Saoirse has never been the praying sort, she's never been particularly religious but she swallows and remembers how Thane prayed for her with his dying breath and she whispers – she never knows if anyone heard her but the ocean – for Kalahira to please just see her through this, to please guide her, to let her surface and make it back safe, please Kalahira, please, let her see this to the end then accept her as a companion when all is said and done.  
  
Life began in the oceans. Life hauled itself out of the ocean and onto the land.  
  
She wakes, freezing, in the shuttle, Kaidan and EDI over her as she hacks up a mouthful of salt water.


End file.
